A long-awaited trial began on Wednesday against three police officers for the killing of a prominent human rights lawyer in 2015 in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest predominantly Kurdish city.
Tahir Elci, who campaigned for Kurdish rights, was shot in the head in broad daylight on 28 November 2015 in armed clashes between Kurdish militants and police.
At the time, he was the director of the Diyarbakir Bar.
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The three officials are accused of “causing death by foreseeable negligence” and face between two and six years if convicted.
A fourth individual described as a Kurdish militant is being tried in absentia on the same charge, in terms of the killing of two policemen and “the destruction of unity and the integrity of the country. “
The activist, who on the same street as Elci when he murdered the lawyer, faces life in criminals if convicted.
Police were to participate in the trial, which began under maximum security in Diyarbakir, through a videoconference.
Officials expelled journalists, adding that the AFP correspondent, from the courtroom, raised considerations about the coronavirus, but a journalist was allowed to return to see the hearing.
Dozens of lawyers and representatives of human rights teams also attended the trial.
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Elci’s death came after the collapse of a ceasefire in 2013 between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is blacklisted as a terrorist through Ankara and its Western allies.
Two PKK militants shot dead two policemen on a street near where Elci died minutes after asking for peace in the restless southeast.
“Many members of the human rights motion in Turkey and around the world will focus on whether the trial is designed to reveal all cases of Elci’s murder or to exonerate the police at all costs,” said Tom Porteous, Human Rights. Look at the deputy director of the program.
HRW criticized the “extreme delays” in the case and the “enormous obstacles to an effective investigation”, noting that the prosecutor investigating the death had been replaced several times and that the government had not accumulated evidence at the scene of the shooting.
Investigators at London forensic studies firm Forensic Architecture released a detailed report last year about the shooting that security forces may have killed Elci.
“It will be very vital that the Diyarbakir court realizes the examination findings and conscientiously whether the prosecutor’s fees opposed to the police are consistent with the seriousness of the crime,” Porteous said in a statement.